Wearing a brown leather jacket and fresh clothes, Seth sat in the passenger seat as they drove a brand-new blacked-out BMW Z4 down the highway. But if any of the references Ben had made to his Jeep being more than just a car were true, Seth strongly suspected it wasn’t exactly a car Nicole steered across the great open spaces of America. He looked out the tinted window at the vast, empty landscape of Montana as they cruised along I-90 at near-felony speeds, making Seth all the more nervous considering the duffel bag of also felony-level weapons in the small trunk of the car.

They had no map, only this sense Nicole said she followed, that someone further east had an aura like Seth’s. Someone who Hunter-33 would be after soon. He resigned himself to her deathrace speed, realizing Hunter-33 could almost certainly move across the country faster than them. They were military. They had access to transport via air.

When Seth wasn’t worrying about her reckless driving, his thoughts strayed to Emma, and the mistake he had made without knowing. No, he had known. He should have stopped Nicole in the kitchen. But that wasn’t the problem, was it? It was those three little words, that Seth thought for certain she only said from the stress of the situation, from her missing him. He missed her, too. Just not in that way. And yet, he could see himself getting there, couldn’t he?

“Quit white-knuckling the door handle like you’re gonna tuck and roll,” said Nicole.

Seth jumped just a little and let go of the handle. She wore dark aviators. Her ubiquitous driving Monster was clutched in her right hand.

“Aura’s shifting south and getting stronger. I’ve got an idea of where it might be, though it’s going to be a pain if they’re where I think they are.”

“Where?”

“When we took that curve a few minutes ago, that’s when it shifted. We’re gonna pass through two towns, I think, and then curve again. If it stays locked and keeps getting stronger at this rate, that person is on Crow Reservation, or I’m going blind with this aura stuff.”

Seth pulled out the phone Olivia had given him and opened Google Maps. “That’s a two hour drive.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. Feels about that strong.”

“How do you see it?”

“I feel it when my eyes are open,” she said. “Like a pull or sometimes a push. When I close my eyes, I see billions of brilliant lights… Auras like yours outshine the rest.”

“So you can fight blind? In the dark?”

“Poorly. Each aura is a dot. It’s a field. I don’t see the shape of someone so I couldn’t dodge a fist or see a gun being raised. But I could make do if I had to.”

“What’s driving at night like?”

“No harder than before I became like this. The auras don’t appear unless I close my eyes.”

“Was that what Ben was doing on the mountain?”

“No, he does something different, he calls it scrying. He’s never explained it to me.”

“You’re more forthcoming than usual.” Seth smirked.

“We’re partners now. You didn’t have to come with me. Would have been bloody stupid not to, but you didn’t have to.” She hesitated. “Plus Ben kind of cursed me out for being an asshat while you were making your phone calls.”

Seth chuckled. “Those words?”

“Near enough.”

Seth thought for a moment. “So are we going to do this like when you showed up at my school? Wait-” He paused. “You were tracking me from that party on, weren’t you.”

She nodded. “Yup. Came to your town that evening, followed you to your girlfriend’s house and then made my way into the party.”

“What about when I spun out-”

“Driving back after you dumped her? Yeah.”

“Why were you standing in the middle of the road?”

“I wasn’t.”

Seth turned and narrowed his eyes. “Alright, enough of the ‘I was beside the road and pulled you out of your truck’ bullshit. I saw you.”

“Seth, what did you see?”

“A person standing in the middle of the road as I spun out.”

“I was following on my bike at a pretty good distance. I’m done messing with you. Seriously. Also. Look at me. Was the person five foot even?”

“I… I don’t know. No. I don’t think so. It was dark, and raining. It was hard to tell.”

She looked over at him through her smoky aviators. “I don’t know who you saw, Seth, but that wasn’t me. I never got off my bike.”

Seth settled back in his seat, troubled. “I saw someone.”

“Maybe you were seeing things. High stress can make you hallucinate.”

He shook his head. “You’ve seen me in high stress. I’ve been fighting since I was eleven and apparently I’m cut out for handling killing. I haven’t thought twice about the people’s lives I’ve taken to survive. I guess that’s just me, or maybe it’s gonna crash into me all at once sometime soon. But you’ve seen me. I don’t lose my head. I saw someone.”

“Hm. It might be a clue as to what you are. Some undead can see the dead. Maybe you saw a ghost or a spirit. Maybe your blood is tainted with the same type of blood I carry.”

“I don’t know. They looked real. They were hard to see through the rain, but they didn’t look like a ghost or spirit.”

“You ever seen a ghost or spirit?”

“Well, no.”

She shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I’m done messing with you and that definitely wasn’t me. I also didn’t see any aura other than yours on the road, for what it’s worth.”

“Did you feel any?”

“No. You were the lone soul on that road as you were driving back.”

A small scattering of buildings appeared to the left, nestled far back from the main highway against a band of trees. Nicole closed her eyes for half a second and turned her head right.

“Yeah. I’m almost positive they’re in Crow.”

“How do you know the name of the reservation?”

“Didn’t I tell you my family moved from Montana?”

“I thought that was a lie.”

“The best cover stories are made from half-truths. This is where I was when I first ran from Hunter.”

“That’s fair.”

She pointed ahead on the highway. “We’re driving past Big Timber next. Not worth stopping at unless nature’s calling you that bad. Billings is right before the reservation and another hour or so from Big Timber.”

“I can wait. Back to my first question, how are we going after this guy?”

“Or girl.”

“Well?”

“First, we have to find them. Auras can get diffracted around people and mess up my ability to precisely find them. Like sometimes when you use your GPS in an area with a lot of big buildings.”

“How bad does it get messed up?”

“You were a mile off for a while until I got up close and locked on to you.”

Seth pursed his lips and nodded. “Aren’t reservations closed to the public?”

She waved her Monster dismissively. “Just parts of it. Plus we’ll have someone who can get us where we need to go if we have to go to those parts.”

“So we find this person, then what?”

“Well, judging on how fast Hunter-33 moved on you, observe and wait isn’t going to work anymore. We go to them immediately and I give them a little demonstration so they believe us, and then hopefully they don’t… Well, they don’t make like the kid in Missouri.”

“I’m sorry,” said Seth. “For whatever happened there.”

“No, no…” Trailed off Nicole. “What happened was unavoidable. What needed to happen happened.”

They raced across the open green countryside as a wall cloud advanced over the plains.